1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an image display method and device, an image display system, a server, a program, and a recording medium, all of which are suited to extract, for viewing, any specific image data from a large amount of image data.
2. Related Art
For display of a large number of images on a display, there is a previous method of displaying size-reduced images, i.e., icon images, in line on a screen of a display. Such display is so-called thumbnail display, and if with a large number of images for thumbnail display, the thumbnail display is not considered effective enough as a display method. This is because simply displaying size-reduced images in line causes a difficulty in correctly grasping the image placement.
Due to such a problem, there is another method for image display, i.e., after extracting a feature level for any specific keyword, disposing an image at a position in a virtual three-dimensional (3D) space on a display corresponding to the feature level. As an example, refer to Patent Document 1 (JP-A-11-1775534) and Patent Document 2 (JP-A-2004-164331). This method enables effective display of a large number of images by image grouping. That is, images defined to have about the same feature level are put in the same group, and images are collectively disposed on the virtual 3D space on a group basis.
The issue with such methods as above for image display is that, if detail viewing is desired for the images, there needs to enlarge the images piece by piece for viewing, i.e., viewing display. That is, the thumbnail display made on the virtual 3D space functionally serves merely as a tool to select any desired image for viewing, and viewing display for any one image data is completely independent from viewing display for the remaining image data. In other words, by a viewer remembering the positional relationship, i.e., grouping relationship, between viewing display and thumbnail display, the relationship among viewing displays is merely grasped. In this sense, the above-described methods are not suitable enough for image viewing by selecting some image data out of many others.